A new study found promising results for a combined physical fitness and cognitive intervention designed to enhance neuroplasticity in older adults. Using a motion-capture video game, the intervention appeared to remediate age-related declines in attention. The findings were published in the journal npj Aging. [Read more…] about Study: A combined cognitive-physical training approach may enhance both mind and body as we age
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From Scientific Learning to Dakim
Two interesting company press releases, one yesterday one today, showing how cognitive interventions may be helpful no matter our age, from kids to seniors, as long as we understand what those “tools” are supposed to do and don’t expect, or are promised, miracles:
Dakim® , Inc. Secures $10.6 Million Series C Funding Led by Galen Partners
- “an innovator in brain fitness technology solutions, today announced [Read more…] about From Scientific Learning to Dakim
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Brain Training: No Magic Bullet, Yet Useful Tool. Interview with Elizabeth Zelinski
Sharon Begley, Newsweek’s science reporter, recently wrote that
- “With the nation’s 78 million baby boomers approaching the age of those dreaded ‘“where did I leave my keys?” moments, it’s no wonder the market for computer-based brain training has shot up from essentially zero in 2005 to $80 million this year, according to the consulting firm SharpBrains.
- “Now comes the largest and most rigorous study of a commercially-available training program, and it shows that there is hope for aging brains. This morning, at the meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, scientists are presenting data showing that after eight weeks of daily one-hour sessions with Brain Fitness 2.0 from Posit Science, elderly volunteers got measurably better in their brain’s speed and accuracy of process
ing.
We recently had the chance to interview Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski of the University of Southern California Andrus Gerontology Center, who led the IMPACT (Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training) Study Sharon Begley refers to in the quote above.
First, some context on this study, which is by far the largest high-quality study of its kind. The study was prospective, randomized, controlled, and used a double blind trial. 524 healthy adults 65-year-old and over were divided into two groups. One received an hour a day of training for eight to ten weeks, and the other spent the same amount of time watching educational DVDs. The IMPACT study, funded by Posit Science corporation, was performed in multiple locations, including the Mayo Clinic, USCF, and San Francisco Veteran Affairs Medical Center.
The discussion centers at his point on the initial results that were presented Gerontological Society of America (the study hasn’t been published yet).
Alvaro Fernandez: Dr. Zelinski. Thank you for being with us. Could you start by setting the context and providing an overview of how human cognitive abilities typically evolve as we age based on insights from your Long Beach Longitudinal Study?
Elizabeth Zelinski: Of course. The first concept to understand is that different cognitive skills evolve over the lifespan in different ways. Some that rely on experience, such as vocabulary, actually improve as we age. Some tend to decline gradually, starting in our late 20s. This happens, for example, with processing speed (how long it takes us to process and respond to information), memory, and reasoning. We could summarize this phenomenon by saying that as we age we get better at dealing with the familiar, but worse at dealing with the new. We can always learn, but at a slower pace.
Are there any specific tipping or inflection points in this trend, any age when the rate of decline is more pronounced?
We don’t have a clear answer to that. It depends a lot on the individual. In general it is a gradual, cumulative process, so that by age 70 we statistically see clear age declines. Which, for example, is a strong factor determining why older adults struggle to adapt to new technologies, but why trying to learn them provides needed mental stimulation. Now we know that genes only account for a portion of this decline. Much of it depends on our environment, lifestyle and actions.
Can you summarize what a healthy individual can do to slow down this process of decline, and help stay healthy and productive as long as possible?
One general recommendation is to do everything we can to prevent or delay disease processes, such as diabetes or high-blood pressure, that have a negative effect on our brains. For example, it is a tragedy in our society that we usually reduce our levels of physical exercise drastically after we leave school.
Let me then ask: what are the relative virtues of physical vs. mental exercise?
Great question! That in fact leads into my second recommendation. Aerobic exercise has been shown to [Read more…] about Brain Training: No Magic Bullet, Yet Useful Tool. Interview with Elizabeth Zelinski
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Brain Coach Answers: How can I improve my short term memory? Is there a daily exercise I can do to improve it?
Q: How can I improve my memory? Is there a daily exercise I can do to improve it?
A: The most important component of memory is attention. By choosing to attend to something and focus on it, you create a personal interaction with it, which gives it personal meaning, making it easier to remember.
Elaboration and repetition are the most common ways of creating that personal interaction. Elaboration involves creating a rich context for the experience by adding together visual, auditory, and other information about the fact. By weaving a web of information around that fact, you create multiple access points to that piece of information. On the other hand, repetition drills in the same pathway over and over until it is a well-worn path that you can easily find.
One common technique used by students, is actually, not that helpful. Mnemonic techniques of using the first letter of each word in a series won’t help you remember the actual words. It will help you remember the order of words you already know. The phrase My Very Energetic Mother Just Screamed Utter Nonsense can help you remember the order the planets in our solar system, but it won’t help you recall the individual planet names: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
These techniques do help you improve your memory on a behavioral level, but not on a fundamental brain structure level. The main reason it gets harder for you to learn and remember new things as you age is that your brain’s processing speed slows down as you get older. It becomes harder to do more than one thing at the same time, so it’s easier to get confused. Your brain may also become less flexible, so it’s harder to change learning strategies in mid-stream. All these things mean it becomes harder to focus. So far, there’s nothing you can do to change your brain’s processing speed, but there are techniques you can use to increase your learning performance, even if your processing speed has slowed.
Focus
Alertness, focus, concentration, motivation, and heightened awareness are largely a matter of attitude. Focus takes effort. In fact, most memory complaints have nothing to do with the actual ability of the brain to remember things. They come from a failure to focus properly on the task at hand.
If you want to learn or remember something, concentrate on just that one thing. Tune out everything else. The harder the task, the more important it is to tune out distractions. (If someone tells you they can do their homework better with the TV or radio on, don’t believe it. Any speech or speech-like sounds automatically use up part of your brain’s attention capacity, whether you are aware of it or not.) In other words, it can be hard to do more than one thing at once, and it naturally gets harder as you get older. The solution is to make more of an effort not to let yourself get distracted until you’ve finished what you have to do.
Strategy:
When you learn something new, take breaks so that the facts won’t interfere with one another as you study them. If you’ve ever been to a movie double feature, you know that you’ll have a hard time remembering the plot and details of the first movie immediately after seeing the second. Interference also works the other way. Sometimes when your friend gets a new telephone number, the old one will still be so familiar to you that it’s hard to remember the new one.
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